(When) do electoral mandates set the agenda? Government capacity and mandate responsiveness in Germany

In democracies, electoral mandates are meant to shape public policy. But how much leeway do elected representatives actually have to implement it? Influential scholars think that (horizontal and vertical) institutional hurdles, budget constraints and political pressure dilute mandate responsiveness, but empirical evidence for this important claim remains scarce. This article provides a theoretical model and an empirical account of the extent to which different types of constraints limit the capacity of governing parties to set their electoral priorities on the agenda. Using fixed-effects Poisson regression on German electoral and legislative priorities over a period of over three decades (1983-2016), we conclude that policies reflect electoral priorities to a greater extent than scholarship has acknowledged so far. We do confirm, however, the constraining effects of Europeanization, shrinking budget leeway, intra-coalition disagreement and low executive popularity. We elaborate on the implications for theories of public policy, democratic representation and comparative politics

Europe’s social democratic parties face a dilemma in how they react to increasing EU integration

To an outside observer, the Eurozone crisis and the public’s dissatisfaction with austerity policies should be beneficial for Europe’s social democratic parties. So why are so many currently consigned to opposition? Using an analysis of speechmaking across three of Europe’s social democratic parties, Isabelle Guinaudeau argues that the process of European integration has been a cause of division. While some parties, such as the UK’s Labour party have actively moved towards the political centre and embraced EU integration, others such as France’s Parti Socialiste have been far less successful in depoliticising the European issue

Policy beyond politics? Public opinion, party politics and the French pro-nuclear energy policy

At first sight, French nuclear energy policy offers a textbook example of how technical, constitutional and economic restrictions, powerful interest groups, and path dependence, constrain democratic responsiveness. This paper uses what might seem to be an unlikely case in order to question explanations of policy choices in terms of technocracy, path dependence, and interest groups, against the background of an underestimated factor: party and coalition strategies. The original data collected on public attitudes towards nuclear energy, and the attention dedicated to this issue in the media, as well as in the parliamentary and electoral arenas, show that the effect of public opinion is conditioned by party incentives to politicize the issue at stake. In other words, parties and coalition-making constraints act as a mediating variable between citizens' preferences and policy choices. These findings point to the need to integrate this conditional variable into analyses of responsiveness and models of policymaking

L’Européanisation de la compétition électorale en France, en Allemagne et au Royaume Uni (1986 2009)

429 p.Since the mid 1980s, European integration has entered in a phase of acceleration which leads the European Union to establish itself as a full-fledged political space whose prerogatives and interventions become more and more palpable at the domestic level. This thesis explores the consequences of this process on party competition. The questioning of the popular distinction between « direct » and « indirect » effects nourishes a reflection about the mechanisms by which parties are affected and leads us to conceptualize European integration as an alteration of parties’ environment and structure of opportunities, through the europeanisation of public policies and the agenda-setting of new issues. This perspective allows both to better integrate in the study of parties the “interactionist” turn of research on europeanisation and to enrich the analysis by anchoring it within ordinary frameworks of parties and electoral competition. The europeanisation of party competition in France, Germany and the United-Kingdom between 1986 and 2009 is studied from the perspective of opportunities and constraints generated by European integration and, then, from the perspective of partisan actors’ reponses at several levels. Our inquiry relies on the analysis of a vast corpus of documents, data and literature, notably on the media coverage of European issues, European orientations in the public opinion of the three countries, europeanization of public policies, discourses held at the congresses of social-democratic parties and electoral manifestos of the different parties. We observe a differentiated, but significative, Europeanisation of parties’ structure of opportunities. Due to the resistances of the actors who dominate inter- and intraparty competition, this tendency affects the dynamics of party competition only marginally.Depuis le milieu des années 1980, la construction européenne est entrée dans une phase d’accélération qui voit l’affirmation de l’Union européenne comme un espace de décision politique à part entière, dont les prérogatives et les interventions deviennent toujours plus palpables au niveau domestique. Cette thèse explore les conséquences de ce processus sur la compétition électorale. Le questionnement de la distinction populaire entre effets « directs » et « indirects » nourrit une réflexion sur les mécanismes par lesquels les partis sont affectés et nous conduit à conceptualiser l’intégration européenne comme une altération de l’environnement et de la structure d’opportunités des partis, à travers l’européanisation des politiques publiques et la mise sur agenda de nouveaux enjeux. Cette perspective permet à la fois de mieux intégrer dans l’étude des partis le tournant interactionniste des recherches sur l’européanisation, et d’enrichir l’analyse en l’inscrivant dans des cadres théoriques depuis longtemps éprouvés pour étudier les partis et la compétition politique. L’européanisation de la compétition électorale en France, en Allemagne et au Royaume-Uni entre 1986 et 2009 est étudiée au prisme des opportunités et des contraintes découlant de l’intégration, puis des réponses apportées par les acteurs partisans à différents niveaux. Notre enquête s’appuie pour cela sur l’analyse d’un vaste corpus de documents, de données et de littérature, notamment sur la couverture médiatique des questions européennes, les orientations européennes discernables dans l’opinion publique des trois pays, l’européanisation des politiques publiques, les discours tenus lors des congrès des partis sociaux-démocrates et les programmes électoraux des différents partis. Nous observons une européanisation différenciée, mais significative, de la structure d’opportunités des partis. En raison des résistances déployées par les acteurs partisans qui dominent la compétition inter- et intra-partisane, cette tendance n’affecte les dynamiques de compétition électorale qu’à la marge

Action publique et partis politiques:L’analyse de l’agenda législatif français entre 1981 et 2009

La compétition entre projets partisans est souvent citée comme un élément constitutif de toute démocratie représentative. Si les littératures francophone et anglo-saxonne ont appréhendé différemment le lien entre compétition partisane et politiques publiques, les partis sont partout le parent pauvre des théories de l’action publique. S’inspirant des théories de la mise sur agenda et de la compétition sur enjeux, cet article plaide pour une reconsidération du poids de la variable partisane, en adoptant une approche à la fois globale et différenciée visant à établir dans quelles conditions les partis aux affaires influencent les politiques publiques. Pour cela, les données du Comparative Agendas Project offrent un instrument privilégié, dont nous illustrons les potentialités en testant plusieurs hypothèses sur le cas des activités législatives françaises entre 1981 et 2009.Competition among partisan projects is often cited as a constitutive element of all representative democracies. While the Francophone and English-medium research literature have viewed the link between partisan competition and public policy differently, in both cases parties tend to be the “poor cousins” of theories of public action. Drawing from theories of agenda-setting and issue competition, this article argues for taking the partisan variable more seriously, by adopting an approach which is both global and differentiated and which aims to establish in what conditions governing parties influence public policies. Data from the Comparative Agendas Project provide a challenging basis for investigating this issue. Testing several hypotheses concerning French legislative activities between 1981 and 2009 highlights its potentialities

Bordeaux

ISBN : 978-3-8329-4807-8 Traduit en français dans "Dictionnaires des relations franco-allemandes", Pessac, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009

La compétition partisane française au prisme des priorités électorales:Compétition sur enjeux et appropriations thématiques

Sur la base de nouvelles données tirées du codage des programmes électoraux français sur la période 1981-2007, cet article propose une lecture alternative de la compétition électorale française. Tandis que le champ sociologique est largement dominé par l’étude des clivages et des alignements, nous appréhendons le jeu partisan en termes d’attention aux différents enjeux électoraux, en partant de l’hypothèse classique de la propriété d’enjeux (issue ownership). Nos données ne permettent pas d’étayer cette hypothèse : elles font apparaître une forte similarité thématique des partis, combinée à des variations d’attention importantes entre les sujets. Nous introduisons donc le concept d’appropriation des enjeux des adversaires qui, nous en sommes convaincus, rend mieux compte des dynamiques de la compétition sur enjeux, notamment dans le cas français : les fluctuations observées dans les priorités des partis sont en grande partie liées à leur tendance à reprendre à leur compte les thématiques de leurs concurrents. Cette perspective permet de mieux cerner l’influence sur l’agenda électoral des transformations du système partisan en général, et l’impact des partis de niche en particulier. Nos résultats illustrent l’intérêt d’analyser la compétition électorale française au prisme des enjeux politisés, esquissent les grandes lignes des dynamiques de compétition sur enjeux entre les partis français et ouvrent de nouvelles pistes de recherche.Based on new data from French electoral party platforms between 1981 and 2007, this paper develops an original interpretation of the French electoral competition. Rather than focusing on the study of cleavages and alignments, we understand the political game in terms of attention to various election issues, starting with the conventional assumption of issue ownership. We confront the latter with the assumption of issue uptake. This better reflects, we contend, the dynamics of issue competition, particularly in the French case. Our results illustrate the importance of analyzing the French electoral competition through the lens of issue competition and provide a new perspective on the dynamics of issue competition issues between French parties

Do Party Manifestos Matter in Policy-Making?

A key factor in modern democracies’ legitimisation is the extent to which policies submitted for public approval before an election translate into material outcomes once a political party has won power. Current research finds no clear empirical evidence for partisanship in policy-making nor has any unified theory been offered or tested systematically. This article addresses that gap by offering a conditional approach to policy-making undertaken by parties in government. It suggests that partisan influence on policy depends on both office-holders’ capacity for implementing policies evoked during their electoral campaigns and on governing parties’ incentives to implement electoral promises. Data from French Agendas Project datasets is used to compare the contents of governing parties’ pre-election manifestos with legislation passed in France between 1981 and 2012. Panel negative binomial regressions on electoral and legislative agendas support the expected outcome, namely that issues featuring in governing parties’ electoral manifesto have had an impact on their subsequent legislative agendas, with the effect depending on both partisan capacities and incentives. Party programmes do matter in policy-making, albeit only under certain conditions

The political dynamics of portfolio design in European democracies

Austrian Research Association (ÖFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under grant P25490

The European Dilemma of Social-Democratic Parties. A Study of Debates at National Party Conferences of the PS, SPD and Labour Party

While the extant literature of EU politicization has revolved around parties anchored at the margins of the political spectrum, this working paper considers the political and electoral implications of European integration for social-democratic parties, and the EU-related debates within these parties. My extensive study of speeches at the national party conferences of the British Labour Party, the French Parti Socialiste and the German Sozial-demokratische Partei Deutschlands reveals that members and leaders of each party have to contend with a tension between their perceived (country-specific) constraints and opportunities in relation to European integration. Faced with differentiated motivations – on the one hand, the perception of a strong adaptive pressure as regards social-democratic programmes; on the other, strategic responses to European integration designed to maximize electoral scores – leaders and representatives of the party minority tend to opt for different trade-offs. Among all three party organizations, EU-optimistic views tend to predominate while EU-contestation stems mainly from representatives of each party’s internal opposition. Studying party internal debates thus reveals the existence of a contestation of European integration stemming from mainstream parties, carrying the potential of considerable consequences for EU-politicization and European integration